Future of Content Lies in the Cloud

Information has never been so dynamic and fluid in nature, as it is today. The emergence of multi-dimensional knowledge platforms and all encompassing communication channels have rapidly expanded the gamut of information sources for organizations, globally. These are acting as drivers of change, feeding businesses with real-time data and content that needs to be processed with agility and speed to gain the ‘First Mover Advantage’. Organizations are faced with the challenge of managing large volumes of content and leverage the knowledge pool they create, for meeting their business goals.

Another significant development has been the advent of mobile workforce that has allowed businesses to expand their target markets and service domains. This increasingly distributed asset needs to be supplemented with anytime-anywhere access to business content. Field agents carry business insights with substantial ground level market intelligence that needs to be captured and entered back into the system. In wake of these recent changes, organizations are left with no choice but to radically restructure their business practices and work infrastructure to cater to this dynamic, information rich environment. This can create significant cost burden and induce strong resistance internally which need to be tackled strategically.

Cloud represents an opportunity for businesses to share and collaborate on documents, access critical information across any platform or device, without having to make huge initial investments on technology or infrastructure. All expenses for storage management, maintenance and support including hardware and software investments are taken care of by the service provider. Moving the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system into cloud frees it from all spatial and IT infrastructural limitations, providing real-time information access for smarter decision making. It makes the system competent for handling all kinds of disaster recovery situations by storing documents electronically on third party platforms, thus eliminating any risk of loss of documents due to unforeseen disasters like fire or flood.

Cloud based content management has many unique industry applications, making it an ideal platform for any organization/department that deals with huge volumes of documents and content. Some of its key industry applications are highlighted below:

Departmental Usage

Functional departments are fraught with the challenge of managing enormous amount of departmental records and information that need to be managed efficiently to respond to various internal and external queries. Cloud based applications enable departments of large enterprises to efficiently organize documents, allowing users to retrieve information as and when required for quick responses. They also enable auto-routing and tracking of documents for faster reviews and approvals.

Educational Institutions

Academic and research institutions need to store and publish institutional content, and collaborate on research projects, while controlling administrative costs. Cloud can become an affordable option that allows institutes to store and publish content that can be accessed by students and faculty using any internet connection, on- or off-campus. Further, it allows secure collaboration with internal / external research and academic partners.

Life Sciences Organizations

The life sciences industry is governed by stringent regulatory requirements and need to securely manage a wide range of clinical, R&D, and regulatory documents. Moreover, market dynamics do not allow any delays in bringing the product to market. Cloud can be a financially viable solution for end-to-end management of critical product documents, allowing the R&D professionals to focus on core research by seamlessly attaching all relevant documents to the research.

Real Estate Organizations

Real estate companies deal with huge volumes of paper-based documents in their day to day transactions. Agents spend most of their time on the field, and documents such as credit report, mortgage forms, title information, contracts, blue prints, site plans etc. should be readily available to them. The cloud platform allows real estate companies to capture and store documents digitally, enabling agents to easily access them while on the field. This results in faster sales transactions and revenues through better informed field agents.

Law Firms/Legal Departments

Law firms/legal apartments need to managevarious types of documents including pleadings, contracts, leases, etc. Legal professionals might need to collaborate on documents, from different location. Cloud infrastructure can help create a scalable and secure document repository, which can be accessed remotely via internet. It thus improves consistency and organization of the vital records.

Collaborative content creation and sharing through cloud has the potential to create strategic business intelligence and drive home a sustainable competitive advantage for organizations. However, migrating an enterprise content management (ECM) system to a cloud infrastructure can be a major undertaking and could prove disastrous without careful planning and strict adherence to the plan. Enterprise wide involvement and behavioral reinforcement through trainings and workshops can mitigate the risk of non-acceptance and information misuse. Data safety nets through built in system auditing capabilities can also go a long way in preventing any kind of information leakage from the system.

Some serious cloud application products in the market such as Newgen’s cloud solution provide a new, cost-effective alternative to traditional enterprise content management solutions by giving organizations complete access to its proven ECM capabilities, on a pay per use basis, while securing privacy and security of intellectual property. The robust architecture of Newgen’s solution hosted on Amazon’s proven infrastructure provides a secure Cloud solution. OmniDocs on Cloud’ offers enterprise class integration facilities with external business systems, and robust file sharing capabilities to help businesses fully leverage the business benefits derived from this revolutionary platform called – Cloud.

—By Virender Jeet, Senior VP – Technology Newgen Software

(Views expressed in the column belong to the author and doesn’t necessarily reflect those of Mouseworld Now. We do not owe responsibility for any opinion expressed in the article)